Hoorah! The new CPR v5000 Call Blocker I ordered to replace the one that got thrown out after the Cox dude told me the one I had wouldn’t work with Cox’s infuriating modem IS HERE! Thank you, Amazon!
When Cox forced its customers to abandon the old, steadfastly reliable copper lines, I already had a CPR Call Blocker installed on my landline phone. It was wonderful. Because it WORKED. I asked the Cox tech to install it on the damned space-gobbling, dust-collecting modem he deposited on my desk, and he said Cox wouldn’t touch anything that wasn’t Cox equipment. Besides, it wouldn’t work.
Right.
Subtext: “We get paid by phone scammers to let them blitz you with advertising and scams, and you can be darned sure we ain’t about to aid and abet your efforts to thwart the bastards.”
However, Cox was making a service called NoMoRobo available to its new VoiP customers. I’d heard good things about it and so figured signing up with that should address the problem of robocalls and live scam artists. Because I had no idea how to attach the little Call Blocker device to the damned modem (sometimes connections can be kinda tricky), I just tossed it out, figuring NoMoRobo would do the job.
Not
So
Much
NoMoRobo is a complete bust. Here’s why:
To block a call from a phone number, NoMoRobo has to let the first jangle ring through. This is how it identifies fake phone numbers. Unlike the CPR 5000, it apparently has no preprogrammed numbers; thus the 5000 numbers blocked by the CPR device just come right through. And it seems unable to identify VoIP/IP rogue diallers, leaving you vulnerable to an expensive scam.
The first-ring feature is a deal-killer for me. It doesn’t matter whether this is a new number nuisanceaferizing you. Even numbers that are blocked are allowed to jangle you up once.
Sorry, but I don’t find the sound of a phone jangling to be conducive to work that requires my full, uninterrupted attention.
Then we have the problem that you can’t signal NoMoRobo that a number is bad with a push of a button. Ohhhhh no. You have to go online to their Website and fill out a freaking form!!!!!! You have to retrieve the offending number from your phone’s memory, report the caller’s name, say what time the call occurred…all of which adds the insult of time suck to the injury of phone scamming.
And as hoop-jumps go, it’s pointless: the robocallers simply generate new numbers, potentially dialing you from every telephone number in your exchange. Or, for that matter, in any exchange.
And we have the added problem that when NoMoRobo fails to recognize a call as pestiferous (which is often), it just lets the phone ring and ring, till your voicemail picks up. At which time the creeps fill up your voicemail with their hustle.
I get upwards of a dozen pest calls a day. Today they started at 8 a.m. sharp; sometimes they start around 6:30 or 7 in the morning. They often run through till 8 or 9 or even 10 at night.
With the CPR call blocker, you simply press the “Talk” button and then, if you’re on a wireless extension, press #2; if you’re at your desk where the device is sitting, you don’t even have to pick up. Just press the big red “BLOCK” button.
The highly satisfying big red BLOCK button….
If you miss that boat, then simply click your phone’s callback button and as soon as the number starts to ring, hit that “Block” button.
The thing has been plugged in for less than an hour, and it already has three numbers in its bank of blocked callers.